COVID-19 crisis paralyzed the world, and a mandatory lockdown began. McDonald’s activity was totally stopped for months and McDelivery service gained a vital relevance. This relevance had a double dimension; not only as a vital asset for the recovery of the business, but also as a way of helping McDonald’s customers to stay safe.

During these months, delivery industry experienced a huge boost, 2,2 million new consumers, +15% of orders and the appearance of new players trying to capitalize on the opportunity. An increase that kept going after the lockdown, to establish itself as one of the customers' preferred consumption options.

So, after the lockdown, the goal was clear: to create top of mind for McDelivery service - contributing to the recovery of the brand- but also to send a message to McDonald’s lovers: that their favorite brand will be always beside them reinventing itself if necessary, to do so.

In May 2020 McDonald’s restaurants began reopening, but fear had installed in people’s mind. After COVID-19, consumer’s confidence isn’t based only in quality anymore. McDonald’s needed to respond to that fear and guarantee safety in all stages of the customer journey, from the order to the delivery.

We had developed an awareness campaign to promote McDelivery, but we needed something more solid; a secure solution that would allow our consumers to continue living micro-moments of happiness.

And that's what we did, through innovation, we imagined a future where media became a safe selling point. By developing the first voice-activated billboards and turning them into a McDonald's kiosk, where users could place their orders only using their voice.

Three months of mandatory isolation have made us value more than ever the small happiness moments in our everyday life. Such as the simple pleasure of enjoying your favorite burger in the company of your beloved ones.

The ‘new normal’ brought an opposite double tension in people’s minds: on one hand, that desire of returning to small indulgences as an innocent reward as a payment for the sacrifice of have being locked that many days, and in the other hand, the omnipresent fear of contagion and the need to be very precautious in every interaction.

We got to the conclusion that the approach of our campaign, would necessarily have to ‘solve’ both tensions: we needed to prove McDonald’s customers that they could keep enjoying their favorite meals in the safety of their homes with McDelivery, and that they could do it in a zero contact, safe and agile environment.

We had the means to create a whole new solution: the technology was out there, we only had to reimagine it to fit the demands of a normality that has changed forever. Maybe consumers won’t go to McDonald’s restaurants, but we will certainly go to meet them in the newly recovered streets, combining the best of two technologies: out of home media and voice tech.

We allied with Clear Channel, and through its technology Vibrant, we launched the very first digital billboards activated by voice in the streets of Spain. Each one of the digital billboards would act as the digital kiosk of a McDonald’s restaurant, taking orders just with the sound of passers-by voices. Clients just had to say to McDonald’s what they wanted to eat, and they received a QR code to be redeemed in orders of 15€ an Glovo delivered it.

Zero contact, a lot of happiness.

Our digital billboard circuit impacted more than a half million people, with more than a million contacts; that is, an average of 2 opportunities to be seen by each person. Recognition of the campaign was +11pp higher than rest of similar activations of the brand.

According to brand tracking, consumers found delivery ordering by voice ‘interesting, original and very timely in post COVID-19 situation’. They downloaded a 100% of the free QR codes, and almost a 50% of them were redeemed.

Regarding efficiency, impacting each person who interacted with voice digital billboards had a cost of 0,1€ in paid media. Repercussion in earned media amounted to almost half a million euros, impacting an audience of 41 million people. The cost of impacting each one of them would have been 0,01€, which means we decreased the cost of impact per person -89% and amplified the hired impact in +7,728%.